Shocking Parole Board Vote Clears Way for Richard Glossip’s Execution in Oklahoma (theintercept.com)
Richard Glossip was arrested, tried, and convicted 25 years ago, for the beating death of someone. He was identified by the person who everyone now thinks was the killer, who recanted his identification of Glossip as the killer, and even the prosecution admits to having mishandled the case, been dishonest, and made mistakes. Everyone wants Glossip to have a new trial: everyone except the victim's family, who are just angry and bereft at their loss, and want someone to pay for it. Glossip has had his "last meal" three times over the years, and somehow, Oklahoma repeatedly relented before it executed him. A Parole and Pardon hearing was held this past week, a long line of people, including the prosecution, agreed Glossip should not be executed, or considered guilty, and it took the P&P Board a few minutes to decide to give the victim's family what they wanted instead. (It turns out that Oklahoma is one of those many states that is bizarrely and incoherently very selective regarding which lives it's "pro.") But Glossip was not executed, yet, by Oklahoma, because even the far right Supreme Court stepped in to block, or perhaps delay, this execution.
If you think this is an example -- one among very many -- that the American legal system is a horrible and unreliable mess, I certainly won't disagree with you. I used to say that the difference between doctors and lawyers was that doctors have to get it right, and lawyers only have to win an argument. But American medicine, or "health care," is so badly slipping that that difference isn't so clear, either.
But the point is that at best, the legal system is at least supposed to rely on proof, or even just evidence. Sometimes, you don't even get that. There never was any proof or evidence, or it happened so long ago that anyone who had proof or evidence has died or is unavailable, or it's just a matter of "he said, she said."
NY and GA, and the federal DOJ, have been careful to get documentation and recordings, basically to prove Trump did whatever they accuse him of having done. And when anyone relies on testimony and depositions, they want a number of people, possibly not reliant on each other, who tell the same story. And that story has to make sense. I always say that everything anyone tells me is a story. What's not a story is what I witness myself. But most of what I hear I don't witness. And I don't "act" on what I don't know, because I didn't witness it.
I'll give you two kinds of examples. First, people report symptoms. The symptoms, by definition, are subjective. But there are objective indicators that go with problems that cause a report of subjective symptoms. I'm very careful to look for the objective indicators. And whenever possible, I won't act unless I have the objective indicators. If I'm going to say something to a patient, or prescribe medication, I have to be right. The likelihood of my being right is dramatically reduced if I just rely on the subjective report, especially if it's inconsistent with the presentation, or with other parts of the story.
The other example is someone I'm treating right now. He's a very smart and hardworking guy, and he's in graduate school. He's also rigid, a complainer, and he's very limited in the people with whom he gets along well, or with whom he even wants to get along well. He told me YESTERDAY(!) that he doesn't like people, and he's hoping for an ultimate professional setting where he can mostly avoid them. I know him well enough to know that he's much like his mother that way, I've actually met his mother, and even he admitted that his mother makes her professional life work "virtually," and that's his goal for himself, too. But the reason I'm telling you this story is that this patient doesn't come in complaining about what an asocial misfit he is. He complains about everyone else, and how unfair, unreasonable, and obnoxious they are. If I just went with his story, I'd be in the wrong universe.
Likewise, Jean Carroll complains that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her. On the surface, considering the experiences some women have, and considering the experiences very many people have with Donald Trump, it's frankly tempting just to assume and believe that Carroll is on the list of women, and people, Trump has mistreated. If you react reflexly, it's VERY tempting to assume and believe that. My theory, by the way, of the legal system is that prosecutors take the trouble to describe, and even show (with photographs), how horribly someone was treated, or killed, because they want a jury that is so disgusted, and so enraged, that it will be champing at the bit to exact retribution for this horrible crime. And they're then presented with one person who can be held accountable, and a surviving family who clearly state that what they want is some version of closure, or that someone should pay for this crime. At that point, everyone stops thinking. Is it just a coincidence that as more and more people, including, for example, the Fox crew, get disgusted with Trump, it's then, at that moment, that Carroll decides she should complain about something she says happened 25 years ago (and that the American people would be receptive to her complaint)? Maybe you've read things I haven't (please present and specify them!), but Trump is, if anything, not subtle. He's infamous for being the cad he is, for his succession of wives, for cheating on all of them. And Carroll flirts with him (was he in one of his marriages then?), and invites him to come with her a few floors away to the more remote section of Bergdorf Goodman, while she models intimate apparel? If she wasn't expecting what she says she got, she needs better friends, who won't just advise her to call the police, and who certainly won't advise her just to forget about it. Unless what she reports didn't happen, at least not the way she reported it. As I said, I wouldn't know. I wasn't there. Neither were you.
Rape is the exception to every “rule.” There are two people involved and never witnesses. The perpetrator is motivated to lie and the victim will suffer great injuries for reporting. We absolutely must believe the woman.
ReplyDeleteThis is a substantive comment, but it does not deserve a reply, because you do not sign your comments. When you grow up, we'll talk. Although this comment is more coherent than most of the "Anonymous" ones, so it's less clear who entered it.
DeleteNow that I know who this "Anonymous" is, let me respond to you. (Although if you're going to make a public comment, I shouldn't be the only person who knows who you are.) First, you use the word "perpetrator." The word you meant was defendant. We don't know that there was a perpetrator, or if there was, that this defendant was the perpetrator.
DeleteI agree with you that if this defendant was the perpetrator, then the perpetrator would be motivated to lie. Do you have some idea that the plaintiff isn't, or can't be, motivated to lie? In this case, there was an implausible story, and no evidence. "Witnesses" were people who were simply told the story. So the plaintiff is experienced by the people to whom she told this story as a mistreated victim. And the outcome was a $5M verdict in favor of the plaintiff. "Oh, you poor, poor thing, mistreated by that bad, bad man, here's $5M" isn't worth lying for?
And finally, absent anything remotely like evidence -- there wasn't any -- your conclusion that "we absolutely must believe the woman" is horribly fraught. We don't blindly have to believe anyone. We can rely on evidence. And if there isn't any, because the woman refused to create any, why should we adopt a rule that we must always believe whatever the woman says? What if the man had a confirmable alibi? Should we believe the woman anyway, because she's a woman?
I have no illusions that women aren't mistreated. But we can't just say that sometimes, they are, so if they ever complain about anything, then we'll just believe them.